Twitter vs the 456
by Galadriel1010
Summary: In an alternative version of the 456's attack, Torchwood take the fight to the highest authority, Jack is in the wrong place at the wrong time and an old Torchwood experiment saves the day.


**Author's Note:** I was at home without a computer, and discovered that I can write stories on my phone by emailing them to LiquidLash. So I did, and I cried whilst I wrote it.

* * *

They sat and stared in horror at the video feed. Jack pushed away from the desk and paced. "What do we do, Jack?" Gwen asked shakily. "Do we go to the United Nations, or the Doctor, or..."

"Way above them," he shook his head, anger burning in his eyes. "Because that is the first diplomatic communication between aliens and Earth where an ambassador has been designated for both parties. That means, under Torchwood's rules, that Torchwood can expose itself. We have to take this above the United Nations."

"Who to?"

"We take it public," Ianto realised. "Get the message out to news agencies, hit Facebook and forums, word of mouth... Everywhere."

"At the very least," Jack said as he came back to stand behind Gwen at the computer. "We have to let people know. We can't let them give their children up without knowing. Ianto, get forum messages posted. Gwen, I need you to form a set of Twitter accounts, we'll have to keep monitoring both and keeping them going."

They both set to work and Jack paced behind them. Once she'd got a dozen accounts, Gwen turned back to him. "What do you want it to say, Jack?"

Jack leaned over her shoulder. "Say... 'They want our children. Tell the government '[Your country] #SaysNo' Retweet."

She typed the message in, checked that it was retweetable and sent it off into the ether. The message was like a spark in the tinder-dry atmosphere of public panic. Within minutes the responses started flooding through, gaining numbers and momentum. Gwen sent it out again and went through to check the links again, replacing the sites that government officials had found and destroyed. The #SaysNo hashtag rocketed to the top of the trends, and news sites finally picked up on it. They started by reporting unrest, whole communities gathering their children together and defending them. Then an army spokesman, in the face of public and political pressure, stated that the army would not comply with the orders. The tide had turned, and Earth was going to war.

Jack watched grimly and squeezed Gwen's shoulder. "Stay here, keep the communication flowing. Rhys, you need to get somewhere else and keep it going too. Ianto, with me. We're going to deliver the message."

"What do you want me to do?" he asked as he followed Jack out.

"I'll drop you at Thames House," Jack reached across and squeezed his hand. "Tell the aliens our message, then get out. I think I'm going to get arrested again, I'm relying on you."

"I'll be there," he promised. "Torchwood's never going to be the same again, is it?"

"It's not," he agreed. "I can't even imagine where they'll take us."

* * *

Jack pushed the doors open and started talking as he strode through them into the bustling office. "Your people have spoken, decision's out of your hands. As we speak here, my people are getting the message out. The ball is out of your court."

"And why are you telling us this, and not the 456?" Green asked. "After all, we're just dealing with the situation."

"Yeah, badly. One of my people has gone to Thames House, he should be there any minute," a harried looking official appeared in the far doorway and Jack smiled grimly. "Let him in."

A few tense minutes later, Ianto appeared on the video feed of Floor 13. He smiled darkly at the camera and turned away to face the 456, raising his hand to activate his comms. _"Sir, I'm on Floor 13."_

"I'm at Downing Street," he nodded pointlessly at the screen. "I can see you."

_"Good. Right then..."_

Jack turned and stalked onto the corridor. "I'm with you, Ianto. The suits can hear you too."

_"No pressure then; can they hear you?"_

He locked the toilet door and put the seat down. "No, just you."

_"Okay,"_ Jack could picture him straightening his cuffs and walking forwards. _"My name is Ianto Jones, and I bring a message from the human race... Computer says no."_

Jack snorted. "I hope they get that."

He heard Ianto tut over the distorted, inaudible reply and smiled swiftly. Then it was Ianto's turn. _"Every human on this planet will resist you. You cannot take any children without starting an interplanetary war."_

There was tense silence, then Jack heard sirens and alarms over the comms. "Ianto, what's that?" He unlocked the door and hurried back into the cabinet room to watch the feed.

_"I get the impression that that was a declaration of war,"_ he heard Ianto twice, once over the feed and once over their comms. _"I'm sorry, Jack."_

"Why, what's happened?"

_"They've released a virus,"_ Ianto sounded frustrated, rather than despairing like Jack felt. _"Apparently it's deadly, and the building has gone into lockdown. Time's up."_

Ianto drew his gun and emptied the clip against the glass, but it was an exercise in futility. When the clip was spent, he turned back to the camera and smiled bleakly, then walked out of shot. "Ianto?"

_"I'm on the corridor,"_ he explained quickly, voice shaky. _"I didn't want them to hear this."_

"Do you want me to..."

_"No, I... Jack,"_ his voice hitched and Jack fled the room to lock himself in the toilet again. "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm sorry I said that, and I'm sorry I never got to make it up to you."

"You know I forgive you, Ianto. I... Oh God, I never want to lose you. Definitely not so soon, and never like this. I just want to hold you one la..." He choked off, unable to say any more.

_"Jack... I love you."_

"I love you too," he smiled through his tears, refusing to give in whilst Ianto was still relying on him. "I'm sorry I didn't say it sooner."

_"It was good though, wasn't it?"_

"Ianto, it was better than that."

Ianto laughed and Jack managed to smile. _"Will you remember me? Make me one of the stories you tell future teams and lovers. You're the only one who really knows me."_

"You're too precious for that, Ianto," he choked again and wiped at his eyes. "I'll never forget you, I promise."

_"Never's a long time."_

"Never. I mean it," he waited. "Ianto?"

_"I'm sorry, Jack. I think this is about it."_

"I love you. Ianto?" He got no reply. He waited and waited, and eventually ripped his comm. from his ear and crumpled.

* * *

Johnson escorted him down the corridor, and Jack opened the door of their cell himself and tried not to notice the way Alice hung back. Stephen ran to him straight away and hugged him, and it was an automatic response to pick him up and hug him back. "Hey there buddy, you ready to be out of there?"

"We are," Alice stepped forwards at last and raised her hand to his face, stopping before she made contact. "My God, Jack. You look like you've aged a decade in three days."

"Thanks," he huffed, turning away. "Shall we get you out of here?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that."

"Why are you sad, Uncle Jack?" Stephen translated his mother.

Jack put him down and reached out for his hand. "My boyfriend died yesterday. He was at Thames House."

"I'm sorry, Jack," Alice came and slid her arm through his free one and squeezed it. "He must have been so young."

"Yeah," he agreed sadly. "A month and ten days short of twenty six. He didn't deserve that."

"He had you, though. That probably counted for something."

Jack couldn't reply, so they emerged into the hangar in silence. Agent Johnson approached them and soldiers guided Stephen and Alice away. "If you hurt them, you'll wish you'd never been born," he snarled as soon as they were out of earshot.

She shrugged and led him over to the monitoring station. "Hurting them wouldn't benefit me, and I'm more scared of Alice than I am of you."

"You're not allowed to seduce her either," he commented bitterly. "Not in front of me, anyway."

She handed him a stack of papers. "Everything we know on the 456."

"I don't need it," he handed it back. "I need the frequency they used to kill Clement MacDonald yesterday and Torchwood project 6328J."

"63... Why?" She was already reaching for the phone as she asked.

"I'll explain when you get it here," he leaned back on the table. "I know it's in UNIT's posession only ten miles from here. Now we need it."

He lapsed into silence and refused to respond to anything for the half hour it took for UNIT vans to arrive outside. Colonel Nivan greeted him with condolences he only accepted because the Colonel had known Ianto, and with a figure wrapped in a blanket in his arms. "Project 6328J, Captain. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to finish it," he pulled back the blankets and looked into the blank face of the world's first cloned child. Neither male nor female, with no distinguishing features and no personality, Torchwood's scientists had never worked out why the project had failed and created an empty vessel. That was partly because they never asked Jack, and partly because he wouldn't have told them. "How old is it now?"

"Nine years, roughly," the colonel set the 'child' down and it stood on its own but didn't even blink. "What do you mean 'finish it'?"

"I'm going to imprint it with an identity. Mine, to be precise. You can't create a person from scratch using that technology, only a body. Then you need to imprint the personality. It was used to create replicas of people who were terminally ill. Enhance the aging process until the clone is the same age as the dying person - usually a bit younger, to be honest, and then copy their personality across. You have two of the exact same person, one who's dying and one who isn't."

"That's..."

"Creepy, weird, morally debatable? Yeah. But right now, very useful for us."

"How?"

Jacl crouched down and rested his fingers on the clone's temples. "Because I'm going to imprint myself on it, so that we have a child's brain with an adult's mind. Capable of giving informed consent. Then we're going to feed the frequency through the new me and use it to destroy the 456."

"Why couldn't we use a real child, rather than having two of you running around?" Johnson asked, glancing towards Stephen in the corner.

"Because there won't be two of me for long," he bit out. "Now let me concentrate."

He blanked his mind and let the open hands of the clone's semi-consciousness draw him in. He could feel it building, feel an echo of himself responding. Eventually it started probing back, and small hands came up, one to grab onto his wrist and one to brush across his forehead. "I'm going to kill him for dying like that."

Jack squeezed his eyes tighter and nodded. "I look as rough as I feel?"

"Not possible," the clone told him. "Now give me a name before I choose one."

He searched through his memory. "Jurden," he said at last. "Okay, Jurden. Ready?"

"Not used that name in a while, good choice. I'm ready."

Jack stood up and looked across the room. "Get them out of here. Anyone who isn't essential doesn't need to see this."

The room cleared and Jurden went to stand in the middle of the array. "Let's get this over with," he chivvied. "Time's a wasting."

Jack chuckled and set the dials. "Take me with you?" Their eyes met and he nodded, there was no escape for him, but Jurden could stop feeling the pain. "Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

He set the frequency flow and stepped back to watch. At first he thought that it was sympathetic pains, but as the frequency increased and Jurden started to scream, Jack knew that he was actually feeling it. The pain was blindingly intense, and brought him to his knees. He didn't see Jurden collapse to the floor as the frequency cut out, or Alice running into the room in panic because Stephen was screaming as well, and nearly collapsing herself when she saw Jack. The echoes looped around his mind and eventually snapped off, plunging him into the cold oblivion.

The blackness faded to grey and the cold seeped away slightly. It had soaked through to his bones, and every breath was reluctant and sluggish. He didn't want to come back, not this time. The coldness could take him and keep him. He unconsciously reached out for enveloping, supportive warmth as his mind hovered below the surface, and awareness crashed over him and brought him to fully with the realisation that there was no one to be there.

He rolled onto his side and saw Jurden's body covered with a cloth, and Johnson watching him. When she moved away, he brought his knees up to his chest and curled in on himself, shuddering with fresh sobs. Someone covered him with a blanket, and Alice's knees appeared in his line of sight as she first crouched and then knelt in front of him. She didn't say anything, just took his hand and held it until he sat up and hugged her, burying his face in her neck. "It's over?" He asked weakly.

"Over," the colonel confirmed. "The aliens were destroyed. I think they got the message."

"Good," he released Alice and let her help him to his feet. "Thank you."

She smiled sadly. "I'm all you've got now, really, aren't I? God, Dad, I've never actually... I never really realised that you... You were dead."

He nodded. "I'm sorry, you shouldn't have seen that."

"No, it's... I understand better now. I really do. I was thinking that, maybe you could come and stop with us for a while? I heard about the destruction of Torchwood and, well, I didn't know if you had anywhere else to go..." She trialed off.

He bent down to kiss her cheek. "Thank you. I'd like that."

"Good."

The colonel approached them and Jack straightened up. "There's something I need to do."

"This way, Captain. We'll take you to him."

* * *

Ianto's body was just one of countless covered forms in the room, the sole casualties of Earth's first officially declared inter-planetary way. Not bad, considering how many had died in unofficial conflicts. Jack walked through the rows of bodies, noting the markers placed by most of the bodies that showed that they'd been identified and claimed. Ianto was one of the few who hadn't - no one had had the time yet.

As a result, Jack was alone apart from a guard when he stopped by Ianto's body, and he dropped carefully to his knees beside it. He didn't want to pull back the cover and have it confirmed, but he had to. Somehow, he still hoped that it was all a mistake, and that Ianto was somewhere outside, wondering where Jack had got to, but he wasn't. He was under this red blanket.

Biting back his tears again, Jack reached out and pulled the blanket back slowly, revealing Ianto's too-pale face. His eyes were closed and his lips slightly parted, both coloured with a hint of blue. Closing his eyes, Jack leaned forwards and kissed first his forehead, then the tip of his nose and finally his still, dry, unresponsive, warm lips.

He pulled back and frowned, trying convince himself that he was imagining things, then pulled Ianto's stopwatch from his inside pocket. His body was warm when Jack brushed against it, as was the stopwatch. When Jack held it over his lips, a very, very faint mist clouded the polished metal. Finally, Jack reached across to find his pulse, but with shaking hands he couldn't find it. "Hey," he called the guard at last. "Get over here."

"Sir?" The guard hurried across and crouched next to him. "What seems to be the problem?"

Jack gestured down at Ianto. "See if you can find a pulse, my hands are shaking too much."

"Sir, he's..."

"Just do it," Jack knew that he probably sounded faintly hysterical, but it didn't matter when the guard reached out and his resigned expression turned to shock. "And now call a doctor."

The guard nodded and stood up quickly, hurrying back to his post and radioing for medical attention. As soon as he had space, Jack pulled Ianto's unresponsive but alive form into his arms, held his head in position with on hand and sealed their mouths together in a kiss of life, pushing as much of his unlimited life energy into Ianto as he could. Eventually he felt Ianto's fingers flex where they were trapped between them, and he checked his pulse again to find it strong and regular.

A medical team scurried into the room and Jack was pulled away from Ianto to let them work, then Ianto was being rushed to Albion hospital whilst the other bodies were checked for unexpected survivors and Jack was questioned at length. Eventually, someone realised that they were going to get nothing out of Jack as long as Ianto's life was still theoretically in the balance, and he was ushered out of the building and taken at great speed to the hospital where Ianto lay in a private room in the UNIT wing. Jack sat down in the chair by his bed and took his hand, bending and straightening his fingers before he started a gentle massage. The doctor had followed him in, and Jack finally looked up. "Pardon?"

The doctor sighed and repeated, "we don't know how he survived when no one else did. Unless you have any ideas?"

Jack shrugged. "Exposure to the Rift, random chance immunity, sexually transmitted immortality?" He shrugged again and laughed slightly hysterically. "I really don't know."

"Okay," he sighed heavily and checked his notes. "We'll keep him on a monitor, so we'll know as soon as you do if there's any change."

"Thank you," Jack's gaze fixed on Ianto again. "Just the waiting game now."

* * *

"Am I very hungover, or did I really die after pouring my heart out to you?"

Jack squeezed his fingers and moved to the bed, too choked up to speak for a moment. "You didn't die, just nearly."

Ianto raised his hand weakly and traced the new lines on Jack's face. "You thought I was dead though."

"Yeah, I did," he took Ianto's hand from by his cheek and kissed it. "They'll fade now you're back with me."

"I really did tell you that I love you," Ianto smiled tiredly.

"And I told you the same," Jack confirmed. "Fresh start?"

"Fresh start," he agreed through a yawn. "Take me home?"

"Not yet," he told him apologetically. "For a start, the Hub..."

"Oh, shit. Where are we..."

"Alice invited me to stay with her for a while, I'm sure she'd extend the invitation."

"I don't want to intrude," Ianto insisted even as his eyes slid shut again, apparently too heavy to keep open. "If you want to stay with her, I'll go and stay with my mum or something."

"Ianto Jones," Jack checked over his shoulder for the doctor and laid down on the bed, pulling Ianto into his arms to lie partly on top of him so that he couldn't be chased out of bed. "I'm not letting you out of my sight for a very long time, okay? We'll find somewhere we can stay together."

"I can cope with that," Ianto slurred. "Sleep now."

Jack kissed his forehead and smiled as the last tension seeped from Ianto's body and he slumped warm and heavy on top of Jack.


End file.
